Where every day in the kitchen is an adventure!

christmas

Gingerbread is without a doubt one of myfavourite Christmas-time treats and I love to bake (and eat) it regularly every Christmas! So when the opportunity to do a gingerbread-decorating class arose with some of my fellow foodie blogger friends (Dining with a Stud, Love Swah, Corridor Kitchen, Cats Love Cooking and VegeTARAian), I couldn’t say no! We were basically doing an extended version of their kids gingerbread-decorating cookie class. The kids class runs for 30 minutes where they decorate 5 gingerbread cookies and costs parents only $20 (perfect time to grab a coffee and lunch in the café next door)!

Just to get us ready to start baking, we sampled a few of Brasserie Bread’s signature fruit mince pies just in time for Christmas! The buttery pastry had the perfect tender bite to it and the insides revealed a deliciously moist and fruity filling. At $3.50 a pop they are definitely at the top end of fruit mince pies, but Brasserie Bread clearly do not skimp on quality here.

Pie sampling aside, we get down to business and started ‘pinning’ the gingerbread dough (each students was given 750 grams). For those of you who didn’t know (like me!), pinning is the fancy professional baker’s word for rolling out your dough, (rolling’pin’, geddit? took me a while, haha.) We rolled our dough out to roughly 0.4 millimetres thick and prepared to go to town on it with our cookie cutters.

And then there were cookies! It was very fun using all the cookie cutters I have accumulated over the years (you can see I have a thing for cupcake shaped cookie cutters) as well as swapping cookie cutters with everyone else in the class.

A blogger’s-worth of cookies.

And into the magical fancy rotating ovens our cookies go! (WANT!)

Matt, our resident baker/teacher for the evening whipped out some pre-baked cookies for us that we would get to decorate. If your child was attending a Brasserie Bread kids gingerbread cookie course, this is where their class would start.

Decorating ahoy! OK, ok, my cookies don’t win any art prizes, but they certainly were delicious 😉If this were the kids gingerbread decorating class, this is where the class would end.

And to finish the evening, we were spoiled with a tasting of Brasserie Bread’s quality goods – bread with all the trimmings! Smoked trout, gorgeous cheeses and Pepe Saya butter.

Christmas is undoubtedly one of my favourite times of the year. I love all the decorations, the Christmas shopping, the shiny decorations and, of course, the Christmas baking! So getting into the festive season, I thought I would share some of my fave Christmas recipes with you.

I look forward to these Christmas truffles every year and I find that, if you’re not the type of person that enjoys Christmas cake, you may enjoy these! The melted chocolate mixed in with the fruit cake really gives a wonderful chocolatey flavour that takes away from the intense fruity-ness that some people dislike about Christmas cake. Give it a try at least once and see how you go if you aren’t the Christmas cake type, and if you’re still not convinced, I guarantee they will be gobbled up by others if it doesn’t take your fancy!

These gluten-free Christmas brownies are a great option for your gluten-free Christmas guests, but are also an incredibly dense, moist and chocolatey brownie that is very simple to make which everyone can enjoy. You can leave off the fondant topping if you want but I love the snowy white topping because it makes me feel extra Christmassy!

I cannot believe how soon it is until Christmas. Every year it seems impossibly far away, until it creeps up until BAM, it is sneakily right around the corner and you’re left with no gifts, no organisation, nothing in the cupboard and a large dose of panic.

Fortunately this year I actually strapped my Christmas boots on months in advance and absolutely vowed to myself I would be organised in order to avoid this all too familiar scenario.

It mostly worked; with the assistance of budget spreadsheets on google drive, ringing relatives early and demanding to know what they wanted for Christmas and of course, making thousands of lists of gift ideas, what to buy and when.

Of course, that never means that you remember everything – leaving last minute trips to the horrifyingly busy shops and queues a yearly reality for that last minute gift so nobody will miss out, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do, I guess!

Another thing that’s crept on me recently – this month’s Sweet Adventure’s Blog Hop, hosted by the lovely Christina from the Hungry Australian. This month’s theme is “Sweets for Santa”. For those who are new to the SABH concept, its a monthly dessert themed blog hop hosted by 84th & 3rd, The Capers of the Kitchen Crusader, Delicieux, Dining with a Stud and The Hungry Australian. Bloggers participate by creating a dessert according to that month’s theme and post about it and read about other bloggers’ themed desserts – a great way to connect with other bloggers and share yummy and creative recipes!

I had been meaning to pop my Christmas hat on for some time but the weeks got away from me and finally I had the time to make a batch of these Christmas truffles.

These pudding truffles are basically a Christmassy version of a cake pop (minus the lolly pop stick) – you simply crumble fruit cake, mix in melted chocolate, shape into truffle sized balls, dip into more melted chocolate and decorate.

You can also add a splash (or more!) of alcohol for an adult-version if you are so inclined, but this version is great for kids as well. If you’re also struggling to come up with ideas for what to bring to a Christmas ‘do this year, turn up with a plate of these and you’ll be the star of the party!

While it is time consuming forming all of the truffles and decorating with the cherries, these are very simple to put together. You could use it as a fun project you could make you with your kids and really, it does require very few ingredients – just pre-bought christmas cake, a lot of chocolate, a little coconut oil (if you don’t have this, you could of course substitute with another flavourless vegetable oil, e.g. soybean, etc*) and a few glacé cherries, I mean hey, it wouldn’t be Cooking Crusade if it weren’t ridiculously simple!

*please note that oils such as olive, peanut or sesame would not be suitable oils to substitute for coconut as they are quite strongly flavoured. the coconut oil has quite a mild flavour and is not really noticeable in this recipe.

Occasionally I’ll go a little bit camera-nuts and decide I want to take in depth photos step by step of how to make a particular recipe, and this is one of those times! So just a warning, this post is pretty pic heavy!

Start melting your second batch of dark chocolate and add a teaspoon of coconut oil.

Melted chocky goodness.

Using a teaspoon, scoop out one spoonful of the mixture and rolling between your hands, form small balls and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. If time allows, plunk it into the fridge to set for about an hour. But if you’re like me, proceed and hopefully everything will be fine!

Ready for dunking? This is the fun part!

Roll your truffles in the melted chocolate.

Until you have many shiny chocolatey truffly balls of goodness.
By the way – if you wanted to set these now and serve them as is if you don’t have time to decorate, these would be great as is and still taste pretty much the same with the additional decorating. But if you want things to be slightly prettier and more Christmassy, soldier on!

Now pop these little chocolate goodies into the fridge to set.

While those are setting, prepare your decorations.

I used 100 grams of white chocolate (about 4 bars of a Cadbury Dream family size bar).

You could melt this separately in a bowl and then pour into your chosen piping bag / bottle / ziplock bag if you prefer, but I found it easier to simply just pop the chocolate into the piping bottle and melt it directly in there in the microwave.

Melted.I added a teaspoon of coconut oil to this too to thin it a little for piping.

Slice your glacé cherries all ready for decorating.I bought these from Coles in the baking aisle.

SO I didn’t get very many photos of the decorating process, sorry! But I will explain it as best I can…

Slice your glacé cherries thinly – the idea is that the truffles look like mini Christmas puddings with custard (the white chocolate) and holly leaves (the glacé cherries). Pipe the melted white chocolate onto the tops of the truffles and arrange glacé cherries on top while the chocolate is still liquid, to ‘glue’ them on top. And that’s pretty much it! Return to the fridge to finish setting the chocolate and you’re done!

A plate of goodies to take to my next Christmas party!

These are also great to wrap up and give as gifts over this Christmas season.

Place fruit cake in a large mixing bowl. Mash the heck out of it using a potato masher, or even a fork will do in a pinch. You could use a food processor if you wanted this crazily smooth, but I don’t mind a bit of texture to it, and honestly I think the masher/fork does a pretty good job most of the way.

Melt 200 grams dark chocolate in a smaller bowl (I usually microwave it in 10 second bursts until completely melted). Pour melted chocolate into the mashed up fruit cake.

Fold chocolate and cake together until the chocolate is fully incorporated into the cake. The mix should have a fairly uniform colour.

Using a teaspoon, scoop up the chocolate cake mixture and roll between the palms of your hands until you have small balls. Place on a lined baking tray until you have used all the chocolate/cake mixture. Place in the fridge to set. (*Note: if you are an impatient lady like me, you can skip this step, but this will probably keep the balls from falling apart in the melted chocolate – not that I had massive issues with this, but it would probably make them handle a bit better).

Prepare your second batch of chocolate for the truffle coating. Break up the bar of chocolate and place in the same bowl you used for chocolate melting previously (hey, save on washing up why not?) Add a teaspoon of coconut oil and melt the same way you did before (10 sec bursts in the microwave) or your fave choccy melting method.

Remove truffles from the fridge and dip into melted chocolate. Roll in the melted chocolate using a spoon, remove and drizzle excess chocolate off truffle (as much as possible) and return to baking tray. Repeat until all truffles are coated. I found that the 200g of chocolate was the perfect amount to coat the 40 truffles I got out of this recipe. Return truffles to the fridge to set again.

Place 100 grams white chocolate into your piping bottle and microwave until completely melted. Add coconut oil and stir to combine. Pipe white chocolate onto your set truffles and add chopped glacé cherries to decorate to look like mini Christmas puddings. Set the white chocolate in the fridge. Best served at room temperature and great to give as gifts!

I do hope you all have absolutely lovely plans for Christmas! I’m hosting a small Christmassy get together this Sunday (my first one, truth be told. I’m rather excited!) Then the usual family get togethers with my and my partner’s families over Christmas and Boxing Day with the usual food and gift frenzy! I’ve also booked movie tickets in advance to see Les Mis on Boxing Day night – it looks amazing and I can’t wait! A week or so off work will also be very greatly appreciated and hopefully I will spend a great deal of the time sleeping and lazily eating. Heaven!

Looking for last minute Christmas ideas for the food lover in your life?

Well look no further!

This year I planned on making Christmas hampers for the first time to give as gifts to family and friends. I’ve also recently fallen in love with the whole stocking filler concept, which I never really grew up with, but have really enjoyed planning in recent years.

If you’re anything like me, there is always someone or other who I have difficulty coming up with a gift idea. So this year I thought I’d really brainstorm about the sorts of thing that hopefully everyone would like, and, given the season, I thought I’d share some of my inspiration and ideas with you!

As always, I’m looking to find the best gifts possible for the lowest price possible in order to stick to a budget. However, rest assured, I would never scrimp on quality when choosing gifts! So if you’re looking to save a dollar or two, this list may come in handy for you!

Even though I bought a lot of these things for the Christmas hampers, I think a lot of them would also be suitable for Christmas stocking stuffers too. If you were planning on making Christmas hampers as well and were looking for inspiration, then you may find this post handy too.

A bunch of these things are also from my cupboard and/or great gifts I’ve recently received for my birthday/early Christmas and do not plan to give away, but I thought they might be good inspiration for others!

Most of these items can be found at local health stores, good gourmet food stores and Costco. You can also check out Coles and Woolworths as they stock some of these items or similar.

Savoury crackers for hampers.

These are always a handy gift to put into hampers – great for entertaining, picnics or for nibbling on dips at home.

Ideas for the health-geeks!

Organic quinoa

Hand made spinach tagliatelle

Savoury yeast flakes (used in some vegetarian recipes)

Raw organic coconut chocolate butter

Chargrilled eggplant pesto

Carmens deluxe fruit muesli

Organic spelt fettucine

Large bag of almonds

For the sweet lovers.

Ice Magic

Marshmallow creme

Turkish delight and Mint Thins from the Reject Shop (I know it sounds silly to shop for Xmas gifts at the Reject Shop, but there are actually plenty of great Christmas items in there for a great price!)

I can’t believe Christmas is just around the corner. Scary, right? I swear it was New Year’s Day for 2012 just a few seconds ago… It is absolutely amazing how time seems to be moving right now. I’ve had a busy week – I’ve turned 25 (today, actually!) and finally upgraded to a full drivers licence (goodbye, P plates!)

This year I was hoping to get ridiculously organised with Christmas super early – taking a bit of the stress off during the mad December last-minute shopping (which usually occurs on Christmas Eve. Haha… but seriously, not joking). I’ve (as usual) been trying to become more organised to help save time and money wherever possible by planning ahead. One of my ideas this year is to make some homemade Christmas hampers for family and friends packed with plenty of homemade goodies. One of these recipes I plan to include are these Christmas brownies!

How lucky was I, then, to be sent a package of Lucky Nuts from Nuffnang to review? It also gave me a chance to completely stuff a brownie recipe full of nutty goodness – as if I needed a reason. While I haven’t used Lucky Nuts in the past for baking, I certainly have used them for everyday uses: sprinkling them in cereals, adding them to pestos and dips and, of course, snacking on at work! Aside from being a good quality product, I like that they’re so conveniently accessible from Coles and Woolies, which is a big plus in my books. All in all, they definitely turned out well in this recipe!

These brownies are based off Nigella Lawson’s Flourless Brownies, but packed with extra goodies – more nuts, cherries and chocolate chips, and topped with a layer of fondant. I had never tried baking flourless brownies before but was pleasantly surprised with the result – a dense, incredibly moist and chocolatey brownie, stuffed with extra nutty goodness. It reminded me of a chocolatey version of a Christmas cake – you could add some liquor, extra nuts and dried fruit to emulate this if you wish but I think they’re pretty good the way they are!

Since this recipe uses almond meal instead of flour, these brownies are also perfect for gifting to your gluten intolerent friends and family! This recipe is also great for cleaning up as it is all made in the one pan.

I thought I would join in on all the fun and make some of my own Christmas gingerbread. So many other of my subscribed blogs have been making Christmas cookies lately, The Pioneer Woman, Sweetopia and Bakerella to name a few. This is me jumping on the Christmas Cookie bandwagon!

I’ve never really made Christmas themed cookies before so this was a first for me. I had only just started collecting cookie cutters as well. Prior to this year, I only had one heart shaped set from Chalet. This year I got another set of stars (Chalet), some Christmas tree cutters for Christmas from my grandmother, a mixed bunch of Christmas-themed cutters from David Jones (trees, stars, gingerbread men etc) and last week I got an awesome set of snowflake cookie cutters from Alfresco Emporium. Speaking of which, if you haven’t managed to go shopping there yet, I highly recommend it! They have so many wonderful baking supplies. I picked up some royal icing powder ($8.95), a cake leveler ($11.95) 12 Wilton disposable icing bags ($11.95 – a bit pricey, but I wanted to try them.. I’ve only got two reusable loyal icing bags at home and they get a bit messy. They were great, but I’m hoping to get some cheaper ones online in bulk sometime soon.) I also picked up an icing bag coupler (hard to find and useful when you want to do a couple different colours with different tips when icing (and only $1.95!) And of course my new beloved snowflake cookie cutters! They were originally $19.95 but they had a 50% off Christmas sale, so they were $9.98, woo!

I’m looking forward to using the cake leveler. Previously I had just a serrated knife to level and tort my cakes but a lot of cake decorators recommend using a leveler. I will definitely report results when I next use it.

For these cookies I used the same recipe that I always use off Taste.com as always, with fabulous results (except for the fact that sometimes I tend to sliiightly overbake them. Hey. Everyone likes slightly crisp gingerbread, right? Guys? Hello?)

To decorate I used the royal icing powder (just add water, it’s a snap!) I’d love to find meringue powder because you have to use quite a bit of royal icing powder to make the icing and it wasn’t that cheap ($8.95 for a bag) and a lot of blogs I’ve been following say that you only need a tablespoon of meringue powder or two and you add in the sugar yourself. Sadly I haven’t been able to find meringue powder anywhere in Australia. If you find any, please let me know! Because I’d love to find it..

For marbling cookies, I also highly recommend Sweetopia – this blog has sooo many beautiful and well written tutorials – the photography is stunning as are the cookies! Check out the post on how to marble royal icing here. Sweetopia is basically a cookie-heaven blog so I also recommend checking out the rest of the posts .. they’re great!

To create the marbled icing effect, simply pipe straight lines of flood icing of a different colour onto the flood icing on the cookie before it has dried.
Drag a toothpick through to create the feathered lines.

I piped this snowflake design on and then sprinkled it with 100s and 1000s.

For the trees, I just used the outline/flood method and then added some milk chocolate chips and extra 100s and 1000s. I was hoping to use cachous because they replicate shiny baubles better but I didn’t have any on me at the time.. Next time, Gadget!

Gingerbread is one of my favourite types of cookies. I never had it much as a kid, but I remember drooling over the shiny packets holding its iced gingerbread tastyness at Woolies and Coles when I was a kid. Wasn’t really allowed them, sadly (probably the right thing to do lol) but since I’ve started baking, it’s been a big favourite of mine. I particularly love the softness and the spice of the cinnamon and ginger that blend so perfectly together. They’re also great for Christmas. I still remember the plate of gingerbread cookies my friend Kira baked for Christmas a couple of years ago. The softness of the cookie melded so perfectly with the crispness of the icing with a teensy lemony tang Kira had added. Yep, we had gobbled them up. I even have a picture of them.

Ah, that takes me back.

Fortunately gingerbread is also one of my boyfriend’s fave cookies as well, which gives me a good excuse to whip up a batch every now and then.

I recently bought a set of star shaped cookie cutters and well, it was a good excuse as any.

You can check out the recipe I used here. I highly recommend this one, super easy and delicious! This recipe is definitely a keeper.

I experimented a little with the icing – one with water and icing sugar and one with milk and icing sugar. I noticed that there was no real discernible difference in the taste, but the icing with the milk was a lot shinier in appearance whereas the water-icing was dull. Hopefully you’ll be able to tell the diff in the above pix.

I didn’t attempt to replicate Kira’s amazing icing because it contains raw egg and I am a superstitious ninny when it comes to raw eggs. Maybe one day I’ll try it. But for now…

About Me

Hi! I'm Christine - I'm a Sydney based chef student by day & food blogger by night. I love learning about food every single day and share my adventures with you here. Thanks for reading! You can contact me on christine@cookingcrusade.com - I'd love to hear from you!